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first framed Heroics and Elegiacs, not so well. Phemonöe, a priestess, and, according to some, daughter of Apollo, is said to have first invented Hexameters; and this is supposed to be the first ever written :

Συμφέρετε πτερά τ' οιωνοί, κηρόν τε μέλισσαι.

See Diogen. Laërt. i. 40. Stat. Sylv. ii. 2. 39. Lucan, v. 126. and Pausan. x. 6. Some affirm that she was the first who gave responses from the oracle at Delphi. The inventor of the Pentameter is said to have been Mimnermus; although the discovery of it is attributed by some to Callinus, and by others to Archilochus.

6. Towards the commencement of the sixteenth century there was extant at Canterbury a MS. of Cicero's famous treatise De Republica: but it was unfortunately lost during the Reformation. As this was at that time an unique, we shall be anxious to hear whether the work be preserved or not in the Ciceronian MS. (from which we are taught to expect much) lately discovered on the suppression of a monastery in Silesia.

7. A curious instance of false quantity occurs in a Hendecasyllable written by Sidonius Apollinaris. Cessissent Sophocles et Euripides. Easier too, than we imagined; it was only making the i's change places.

8. Qu. What MS. was that which Morell refers to in his Greek Thesaurus under the word χλοννις ?

9. Worse than Tryphiodorus, and half as bad as Sotades, was that poetaster who wrote three poems of one page, ten pages, and half a page, respectively in length, the words in all of them beginning with P. Let two lines serve as a specimen :

Perlege porcorum pulcherrima prælia; potor,

Potando poteris placidam proferre poësin.

10. Here are two Epigrams; and both good in their way. The first is calculated to suit the taste of those who think there is nothing like working simple equations; the second will be best understood by those who "trade and traffic in riddles.”

Poma Petrus carpsit, decerpsit & arbore Paulus;

Pomorum numerus quis sit uterque latet.

Petrus ait Paulo, duo des mihi poma tuorum
Pomorum,-numerus tunc mihi duplus erit.
Paulus ait Petro, tria des mihi poma tuorum
Pomorum,-numerus tunc mihi triplus erit.
Dic quot poma Petrus, quot Paulus ab arbore carpsit;
Si qua fides, cedet BLANDIUS ipse tibi.

Dic, quibus hoc animal terræ nascatur in oris,
Masculus est mater cui, mulierque pater.

Who has not read Bland's Algebraical Problems ?

ON THE CONFORMITY OF THE

GREEK, LATIN, AND SANSKRITĄ

LANGUAGES.

No. 11. Vide No. XVII. p. 219.

In the sixteenth Century Henry Stephens, the son of Robert,

published a treatise on the conformity of the French and Greek languages in the noun, pronoun, verb, adverb, preposition, and conjunction, which might well serve for all the modern tongues that are the allowed and legitimate descendants of the Greek and Latin. The Greek in the same manner, and the Sanskrit, alike not only in the general contour, or outline, but also in the most intimate structure of parts, not merely in the regularity of their march, but also in the anomaly of their process, come down probably from a common parent. This is however by no means the universal opinion, and with the majority the Sanskrit has the precedence. It is the design of this paper, in order to demonstrate the relationship and close connexion of the two languages, to show the points in which they touch, and the similarity of their construction, from whence some idea may be suggested of their rank and order, whether the one may have been loug prior to the other, or whether they are nearly of the same antiquity, and the scions from the trunk of a primeval language.

In comparing the Greek and the Sanskrit, it is not my intention to make long extracts from Caninio or Clenard for the one, or Wilkins and Colebroke for the other, but to mention, as briefly as possible, consistently with perspicuity, certain facts in the grammar of each, common to both, which may be verified at plea

sure.

The Greek resembles the languages of the Hindu class in being read like them from left to right, whilst the Arabic, Persian, Hebrew, Syriac, and Chaldee, proceed from right to left.

OF THE SANSKRIT LETTERS, AND VOWELS, &c.--The Sanskrita language has fifty letters in its alphabet, thirty-four consonants, five vowels with double powers, four diphthongs, and two substitutes for nasals; but of the thirty-four consonants, there are but twenty-three simple and distinct articulations; for, of the first twenty-five, ten are but aspirates of the preceding letters, combined with hà, as is the last letter Ksha, made up of Kà and shà, Cl. Jl. Suppl. NO. XVIII. VOL. IX. 2 K

as Mr. Wilkins thinks, and the most learned Professors of the language.

The vowels, &c.-The simple vowels are five, with ten characters to mark their long and short sounds, the semivowels four, the hissing letters three, with one aspirate.

Compound consonants.-Where one letter is equitant, and rides upon another.

Where two consonants meet without an intervening vowel, they coalesce, and form a compound.

Apocope. When a word ends in a consonant, the vowel which is given to every open consonant, not followed by another vowel, is cut off by a mark of elision, as in vak, talk, which without it, would be vaka.

Accent. In the old Sanskrita books, a small perpendicular line over a vowel denotes that it is sounded high, a parallel line under a vowel denotes a low tone, and a crooked line shows that it partakes of both.

Aspiration. The fifth vowel lri short, and Iri long, shews the soft and hard breathing, and the different strength of the voice in pronouncing a syllable.

The Greek letters. The letters of the Greek language are 24, of which three are double.

Vowels.-The vowels are seven, three of which have double powers; the diphthongs are twelve, six proper, and six improper. Of the seven vowels, two are long, Eta and Omega, two short, Epsilon and Omicron, and three doubtful. The Greek has also eight semivowels, one sibilant,-three aspirates, and three compound consonants, and certain nexus literarum, in which a letter or a syllable is mounted upon another.

Accent, aspiration, and apocope. -Elevation of a letter or syllable is expressed by an acute, depression by a grave, and two lines meeting in an angle, or a circumflex, show that the syllable when uttered, partakes of both high and low.

Aspirate. The word opp in Greek has a lenis over the first, and an aspirate on the second rho, and is pronounced like Iri short, and Iri long, the 5th vowel in Sanskrit.

1 7

Apocope. "Epio, Hλos, and Exwgars, with apocope, which cuts off the last syllable, are, eg, A, σxúg. This last in the genitive is σκατὸς for σκώρατος.

NB. The permutations of vowels, and coalition of consonants in the Sanskrit, occur in the dialects, and the poetic licenses of the Greek poets.

Nouns and pronouns.-The Greek and the Sanskrit agree in

See Eustathius and Caninius, Gram. Gr. p.4.

having three genders, and three numbers; and in declension, the Greek through five cases, and the Sanskrit through eight; in the former the genitive of, and the dative to, include by, from, and in; in the latter, the third case is by or with, the fifth from, and the seventh in, which cases may have been formed by dividing the latin ablative of the latins into three.

Here we have a specimen of the perfection of the Sanskrit, that is so completely filled up, as to leave no place for doubt or conjecture, whereas in the Greek, and particularly the Latin, you are not sure whether Othoni and Amori in the following passages, be in the dative, or the ablative, but by the sense.

-et formidatus Othoni

-placitone etiam pugnabis amori

since Othone and Amore will agree as well with the metre: The truth seems to be, that the dative and ablative were at first the same in the singular, as they are still in the plural ;-the proof of which is, that Musa in the ablative is long, when the nominative is always short, and if written at length would be Musai, like the old dative. Quintilian says, some make casus septimus, by dividing the ablative into two, by which it is more independent of a preposition, and this no doubt has been the motive of the Hindu grammarians in making eight cases instead of six.

In the Sanskrit the first seven declensions end in vowels, and the eighth in a silent consonant. In the Greek there are only three, the first has four terminations of the nominative, two in consonants, and two in vowels.

The second has two endings, both in consonants.

The third has nine, four in vowels, and five in consonants, all increasing in the oblique cases.

The noun ship, or boat, in Sanskrit of the seventh declension, compared with the Greek and Latin nouns of the third, will show the difference between each, and the gradual improvement of the second and third,

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As the Sanskrit shows the progress of language among the Hindoos, so does the Attic with the Greeks, in being more complete than the dialect of the Eolians, who have no dual number, for, although every dual is necessarily plural, yet every plural is not dual, but when two only are spoken of.

Genders in Sanskrit are subject to the same irregularity with genders in Greek, and equally impatient of general rule without exception, and, as like endings have not always like genders, they, are not to be known in all cases by rule or reason, but must be learnt by rote.

Pronouns are alike irregular in their declensions in Sanskrit, as in Greek, and used as adjectives in both languages.

Patronymics. In the formation of Patronymics in Sanskrit, the first vowel is occasionally augmented, and the primitive receives an affix. In Greek, the first vowel, if short, is sometimes made long, as in Ilgiauos, Пgiauions, Pelops, Pelopides, which latter cannot stand in a heroic verse.

Verbs. The different kinds of verbs, primitives, derivatives, and nominals, are common to the Greek and Sanskrit. The primitives of the latter are such as have for their roots their own radical syllable, or syllables divested of the changes of inflection, Thus, trap and yav, &c. are the roots of the primitives trapyati; and yavati, he delighteth, he seeketh in the third person, which in Sanskrit is reckoned the first.

The primitives of the former, as régnw, have the consonant before the last vowel of the root for the characteristic, and formative letter of their conjugation, which precedes Omega in the pre

sent tense.

Causals and reiteratives.-The causal verb is a derivative formed upon its primitive, by introducing the syllable aya before the termination, and by making yavati, he looks for, yavayati,

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